A true conservative, a Christian, and a Tennessean, I hope to contribute my two-cents on politics, policy issues, life, and sports.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Could the Next President be Party-less?

How is this for a coincidence - I was preparing to write a story about the man who I think might be the next President of the United States, a man who has made diminishing the global nuclear threat his main issue over the past several years, and then it turns out that the story of the day turns out to be nuclear materials being seized in Slovakia. Go figure...

The point I am trying to make is this - with Giuliani being no different than Hillary Clinton in the eyes of most conservatives (and rightly so, I might add), Romney being the biggestMassachusetts flip-flopper since, well, the last presidential election, and Fred Thompson being outed by the media because he - gasp! - has chosen to make his campaign about actual issues facing this country, it is looking more and more like the conservatives may not unite behind any of the Republican candidates in the primary. Ah, but what happens when we hit the general election?

I (along with many other pundits) have long believed that a third party candidate (Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee perhaps) would ride upon the scene like one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and hand Hillary the White House by sloughing off the conservative base of the Republican Party.

I'm starting to think that might not happen. Oh, I still think that there will be a third-party or Independent candidate.

I just think that he might win.

I think that Democrats will vote for him because he used to be a Democrat in the U.S. Senate and he's not Hillary Clinton.

I think that Republicans will vote for him because he is pro-life, Southern, fiscally conservative, respected by both sides of the aisle, a supporter of the federal marriage amendment, and has more foreign policy experience than all of the current crop of candidates combined.

No, I'm not talking about Zell Miller, but you do have the right state in mind.

Folks, former U.S Senator Sam Nunn, who currently serves as co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, has been quietly talking about running. If that's the case, then the former Senator from Georgia is a real threat to both Clinton and Giuliani because he takes votes away from the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, the Independents, and from all across the Republican Party, especially the base.

I'm not ready to throw in the towel on Fred (he needs to come in second in Iowa and win South Carolina, though, and his campaign has been admittedly awful and unwilling to accept grassroots help to this point), but I would certainly be willing to support Nunn over Giuliani and Clinton in a hypothetical three-way dance.

MORE: Tommy Oliver over at Race42008 had the same thoughts recently. Read his post on why Nunn is attractive to voters, his over two decades of service in the Senate, and how he came to be one of the most noted voices on U.S. foreign policy.